EvQueue is a free software task scheduler and queueing engine. It handles the planning of simple tasks but also that of workflows, chaining basic pieces of code to more complex endeavours.

We’ve been working on it in my NGO* for around three years, and been thinking about liberating it for half of that time. Now it’s finally available for everybody to enjoy, although it remains more of a web/server/admin/dev thing. We’ve been using it in a production environment since the beginning; to date, more than four millions workflows have been executed.

It has proven very useful for our websites and web applications to allow for background tasks. When a user wants for example to generate personalised snail mail for thousands of people (accordingly big pdf file), or upload a bunch of photos that need to go through some treatments, the operation can get lengthy. Far too lengthy (10s of seconds, minutes) for a page reload! Launch an evQueue workflow that deals with the export or upload, and it’ll run in the background. The user can go on with his or her navigation, and the website can silently check on evQueue to know when the workflow is finished, then inform the user in whichever way.

Documentation on how to install and use evQueue, as well as workflow examples, are available on the evQueue website.

* Que Choisir is a French consumer-protection organisation, we at the IT department work on its websites and many internal web applications.

So Hugo was pretty busy lately working for his exams, but he still wanted to have a second edition of the MutterWare, an event he forked, modified and organised, which took place back in March.

The MutterWare, forked from the TupperVim concept, welcomes anyone interested in the email client mutt to discover it, for newbies like me who never even installed it yet, for beginners and intermediate to get the skills from the (not necessarily) elders, and for the already experts to exchange tips and scripts.

Hugo gave me a few contacts, I hanged out on #frenchmoz , exchanged a few emails, and soon I had Paul from Mozilla booking a room for us at Mozilla’s new headquarters in the centre of Paris. But he didn’t tell me we were going to get their huge meeting hall! (see upper and below pictures)

The first MutterWare had gathered five people, we have doubled that number. My several announcements on French-speaking mailing lists and news sites (especially on LinuxFr.org) must have raised interest and so the ten of us met at Mozilla’s at 8p.m.

An agenda had been thought of, but we sure did not play by it; things immediately made themselves relaxed and informal. Different persons presented their way to use mutt and parts of their config, raising many “how do you do that”s and “what’s that at the bottom”s. After these talks, people grabbed fruits and crackers as discussions went on in small groups. The atmosphere was good and the event lasted for three hours before anyone resigned herself to go home.

Many people showed much interest in the event and thanked us for putting it together, which is a sweet reward. And furthermore, this gives us a full tank of motivation for spawning the next MuttWare, maybe as soon as January!

Should you have some, I’ll be happy to answer any questions regarding the organisation or course of the event!

Andreas, Sam and I have been thinking about the opportunity to meet up and achieve some work on FSFE’s web site. The idea of a Web Sprint to gather forces and fix dozens of bugs sounded like the best option. This is why we are proud to announce that the next Web Sprint will take place in Manchester, April 21st and 22nd.

After the success of October 2010′s Web Sprint which saw the advent of fsfe.org’s new design, we hope to fix lots of bugs, offer new functionalities and more important, have a great deal of fun with nice people!

How you can help and join:

meet us there: the more the merrier! We welcome all participants who want to give a try at improving FSFE’s website(s)!

join us online: even if you can’t be in Manchester, fixing bugs remotely is of course possible and wanted!

give us feedback and ideas: not that much of a web designer or programmer? Browse fsfe.org, and while reading about things that matter, tell us what you think. We welcome all comments and ideas, there’s always room for improvement. You are, we are the users!

If you wish to join us physically and you don’t have a place to stay yet, Sam knows a hotel where you can stay for approx. 35€ a night. Let us know! We will further announce the precise location and a more detailed planning soon.

The nice plugin to put your work under any Creative Commons license is available on FSFE blogs. You can define default parameters that will be used on each piece of content, but of course also a specific author and license type for each photo, for example.

Thanks to Torsten for the above picture.

Edit: as Hugo mentions, the result is awful when aggregated on planet… I’ve uncategorised my blog post so that it’s not aggregated anymore, but this is of course a show stopper.

As I mentioned on the translators mailing list some time ago, everyone with a bit of time can help translate his or her favorite PDF reader application. This can be translating the actual software, as well as the download pages online, which both help to reach a wider range of users.

Just a week ago, Matthias and I went to the “Grand Opening of the W3C German-Austrian Office at DFKI“, the new office of theirs based in Berlin. Many people with different backgrounds were there, there was a series of inspiring keynotes as well as live demos of the brand new applications based on W3C standards.

Keynotes

The introduction keynote explained how and why W3C standards are to be used in the enterprise world, which was kind of a good introduction in the topic. Dr. Orestis Terzidis of SAP went on presenting the standard they are developing for a Universal Service Description Language (USDL) for use especially in business (slides).

An incredibly inspiring and highly interesting speech was this of Prof. Philipp Slusallek, who presented XML3D, a new generation description language for 3D environments. But the live demo was even more incredible (read hereunder).

W3C CEO Jeffrey Jaffe then gave a nice overview of what an Open Web Platform should look like. He was also followed by a talk on the Ubiquitous Web and another one about Social Media Analysis by the company Attensity.

Live demonstrations

After the talks, I spent some time discussing with two DFKI projects that were presented live. The first one was based on a “second life” game, and implemented discussions with a non-player character, who could answer your questions about anything (celebrities, movies…), or guide you through the process of choosing and buying a piece of furniture in an in-game shop showing 3D models of real products. All their knowledge is “static” ad extracted from the internet (Wikipedia, imdb.com, a furniture shop…). Projects: KomParse and TAKE.

The second project was based on XML3D, and shows very good results! In a standard browser (modified Chromium or Firefox 4), there is a space showing interactive 3D graphics, all described within an XML file! It includes possibly any 3D graphics you describe, with e.g. export function from Blender. The demo showed a 3D strategy game in the browser, a 3D chess game or even physics-aware scenes with e.g. falling cubes!

Definitely looking forward for news from the W3C German-Austrian office, great job!

FSFE is about to vote for the new fellows who will be full members of its General Assembly, which is the main body of the association and thereby takes important decisions in FSFE’s life.

Every registered fellow is allowed to vote, and every fellow registered since at least February the 1st, 2010, is allowed to run for the elections.

How to become a candidate?

First, you have to send en email to fellowship<at>fsfeurope<dot>org with subject “Candidate Fellowship seat.”, in which you tell to be willing to run for the elections, and explain your involvement in Free Software, more about yourself, etc. This has to be done before the 25th of January, so at your keyboards, ready, go! If you can not or do not want to be a candidate, maybe you can emulate other fellows you know and who would want to grab a fellowship seat at the General Assembly?